


The Big House and the Sweet Face

by seeminglyincurablesentimentality (myinnerchildisbored)



Series: Rose Shelby vs. All the Bastards [9]
Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 11:27:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18916033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myinnerchildisbored/pseuds/seeminglyincurablesentimentality
Summary: Rose is made to move up in the world and has to get her game-face on.





	The Big House and the Sweet Face

**Author's Note:**

> Set between seasons 2&3

“Come on, Rosie” Tommy called from downstairs. “We’re going for a drive.”  
She came running out of her and Finn’s room, hopping to pull on her second boot.  
“Where’re we goin’?”  
“Surprise, my little love,” he said. “Big surprise.”

#

They pulled up outside a hotel in town.

“Hop in the back and wait,” Tommy instructed as he was getting out. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Rose watched him disappear through the turning door. She scooted over to the driver’s side and took the wheel. It was big, and the feel of it made her think of captaining pirate ships on the high seas.

The door of the hotel kept spinning; swallowing people going in and spitting others out onto the foot path. All of them looked like you’d be rolling in it if you’d manage to pick their pockets.

Rose groaned when she saw Grace emerge alongside her father a moment later. She’d not seen her since they’d announced the engagement – that’s what it was, Alice had told her, an engagement – and she’d managed to almost forget about it, most of the time. There was a small bulge, barely visible beneath Grace’s dress and coat, where she was growing the bastard.

“In the back, I said. Go on.”

She obliged, making sure to put her muddy boots on the passenger’s side of the seat as she climbed over into the back. Tommy looked at the footprints for a moment, then took of his jacket and spread it over the seat.

“Chivalry’s alive and well, I see,” Grace said with a smile.

He offered her his hand to help her climb in and somewhere inside Rose’s belly things started to bubble and boil like a witch’s cauldron.

“Hello, Rose,” Grace said over her shoulder once she was settled in. “How are you?”

Rose leaned as far back as she could and scowled. Her father got behind the wheel, turned and delivered a stare that made her heart skip a beat.

“Grace asked you a question,” he said quietly.

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and tried to muster a stare of her own.

“Rose…”

“It’s alright, Thomas.” Grace reached over and put her hand on his arm. “I don’t mind.”

“I do” he said, his eyes never once straying from Rose’s increasingly itchy face.

She set her jaw as best as she could and turned her head to look out the window.

“Look at me,” her father said, sounding perfectly calm and perfectly dangerous.

Rose dragged her eyes back until they found his.

“You mind your manners,” he said, “or you get out. What’ll it be?”

For a moment, Rose pictured herself exiting the car, her head raised in some sort of triumph. But then she’d be on her own, miles from Small Heath, with empty pockets and nothing but the long walk home in front of her.

“I’m fine, thank you, Grace,” she muttered.

“Not hard, is it?”

Tommy let his eyes rest on her just long enough to let her know he’d be having none of this, not now or any other time.

“No,” Rose said soundlessly.

“Right,” he turned back round and gave Grace a smile Rose had never seen before. “Off we go. I’ve something to show you.”

#

They drove so far out of town, Rose started to get her hopes up that they were going to a fair. That’d be orright, even with Grace there.

As it were, they turned off onto a barely-there road that went through a pair of crazy looking trees, passed through an open gate and stopped on a round bit of driveway in front of some kind of castle Rose presumed that’s what it was anyhow. It didn’t have a moat, granted, but it was huge and had two turret-looking things on top. There was a house growing out the side of the it, as well.

Her father got out, walked round the car and reached for Grace’s hand again, steadying her as she stepped onto the crunchy gravel.

“What d’you think?” Tommy asked.

Grace just kept looking back and forth between the building in front of her and Rose’s father beside her. Rose slid over and leaned out of the window.

“What’re we doin’?” she asked.

“Having a look,” her father said.

“Why?”

“D’you like it?”

“Do I like what?” Rose asked even though she wasn’t entirely sure he was speaking to her.

Grace turned, smiling so brightly it made her want to squint.

“Our new house, Rosie,” she said.

Rose made a face; at Grace calling her Rosie for a one and at the ridiculous idea that this was their house, anyone’s really, for another.

“Can we look inside?” Grace asked Tommy, looking at him like he’d just conjured a flock of living cockatoos from his cap.

“ ‘course we can,” he said in a tone so jovial, it made Rose want to kick his shins. “It’s our bloody house.”

They set off towards the monstrous thing, arm in arm, Grace’s head inclined ever so slightly towards Rose’s father, as if he was whispering to her.

Rose wrenched her door open and hopped down, trailing in their wake, the house looming larger and larger with every step she took towards it. When she stood on the bottom step by the entrance and looked straight up, she could barely make out the edge of the roof, that’s how big it was. It made a shiver run down Rose’s spine, the sheer enormity of it.

Tommy pushed the door open and they walked inside, into a room that was all types of wooden and polished and shiny, with a staircase right out of the pictures and a window with enough stained glass in it to sort out any church Rose’d ever been in, which admittedly wasn’t many, but still.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Rose blurted out, awed despite herself.

He smacked her.

She couldn’t believe it.

He reached over, with a put-upon sort of sigh, and smacked her upside the head.

 “What was that for?” She stared up at her father with such fury she thought it might melt her eyeballs.

“We’re moving up in the world, Rosie,” he said with the hint of a grin. “Higher stakes, higher standards.”

“What?” Rose had no clue what he was on about.

“Come on,” he said, taking Grace’s hand and nodding at Rose to follow. “We’ll start upstairs, shall we?”

#

Polly was taking pictures off the wall, wrapping them in scarfs and newspaper before putting them into a crate on the table.

“Can I help?” Rose asked from where she was lingering in the doorway.

“If you’re careful.”

Rose climbed onto a chair and lifted a picture of some long-dead relation from its nail.

“How many rooms does your new house have?” Rose asked.

“Four.”

“Is Michael going to stay there as well?”

“Only sometimes,” Pol said, folding a sheet of old news around a frame gently. “If I’m lucky.”

“Won’t you be lonely?”

Polly raised an eyebrow at her.

“All alone,” Rose went of softly. “In a strange place?”

“What are you asking, sweetheart?”

Rose sighed, climbed off the chair and flopped onto the sofa.

“Can I come?” she asked in a small voice.

“With me?”

“Yes, please.”

Polly put the picture in the crate and sat down next to Rose. She was smiling, but it wasn’t exactly a happy smile.

“I’ll miss you, too,” she said.

“You won’t have to miss me if I come,” Rose said hopefully.

“Change is never easy,” Polly said. “But you’ll get used to it, you’ll see.”

“I won’t.”

“You will.” Polly took Rose’s hand in hers, rubbing a finger over her knuckles. “You got used to living here with me, you got used to your father being back, and you’ll get used to…this.”

“You don’t like her,” Rose pointed out.

“What makes you say that?”

“I’ve eyes and ears.”

Polly’s mouth twitched.

“You said she was a _lubni_ ,” Rose said. “You said it to Ada. She doesn’t like her either, none of you do.”

“Even so, it’s not any of our decision.”

“Can’t you talk to him?” Rose asked.

“I’ve tried, _ves’tacha_ ,” Polly said quietly. “But he’s made his mind up. And all that’s left to do is to find a way to live with it.”

“I could live with it and live with you.”

“Kin belongs with kin, Rosie.”

“You’re my kin as well.”

“It’d break his heart.” Polly sighed.

“It wouldn’t,” Rose insisted. “It really wouldn’t. He’s got her now and the bastard as well. Soon.”

“You better not let him hear you say that.”

“It’s true but.”

“He’s trying for better things,” Polly said. “For us. For you. Especially for you.”

“I don’t want better,” Rose sniffed. “It was orright before.”

“Sweetheart, I know.”

Polly lifted her arm and Rose slid under it and close enough to hide her face against Pol’s shoulder. She heard the back door open and shut, footfalls coming in from the kitchen.

“What’s wrong with that one?” her father asked.

Rose burrowed deeper into her aunt.

“Spot of sadness,” Polly said above her.

“Rosie?”

“Just leave it, Tommy.”

“Rose.”

“What?” she snapped without looking up, embarrassed that she was bawling like some sort of baby, annoyed that he couldn’t look the other way just once.

“It’s only fuckin’ Warwickshire,” her father said. “You’re not going to the moon. Christ almighty…”

She could hear him walk off and the door went again, this time the front one. Polly was rubbing the back of Rose’s neck now, as though she was a cat.

“Men,” she said soothingly, “are useless at matters of the heart. Bloody useless.”

Rose finished the last of her tears, there weren’t all that many left.

“Right,” Poll disentangled herself and sat Rose up properly. “Ready?”

“For what?” Rose wiped her eyes with her sleeves.

“To learn a new game.”

“What game?”

“ _Mooi goodlo_ ,” Polly said. “It’s a game every girl needs to know, if she doesn’t want to make unnecessary troubles for herself.”

#

They were having their first dinner at the big house. The table was too long for the three of them; and the food had to travel a long way from the kitchen down below. There were two girls in black dresses with white aprons to bring it up.

Rose sat very straight, holding her knife and fork like they were fountain pens.

“This is nice.”

Rose looked up at Grace in the chair across the table. Tommy was in between them, at the head, silently working on his bit of lamb.

“Yes,” Rose said. “Lovely.”

She could feel her father’s eyes on her, but she didn’t even glance at him. She just kept looking at Grace, concentrating on keeping her smile in place. Grace smiled back. Very gently, Rose carved another small piece of her own meat, chewing it slowly, not tasting a thing. It was hard to smile while you were chewing, but it wasn’t impossible.

“Are you excited for tomorrow, Rosie?” Grace asked.

She’d be going to her new school tomorrow, to St. Paul’s, to be with the posh girls. The thought of it made Rose want to spit her food out.

“I am, thank you,” she said pleasantly.

Her father’s eyes were fairly burning into her left temple now. Rose speared a bean delicately, or so she hoped.

“A little nervous as well, I imagine?”

Rose shrugged a little, her smile never wavering.

“There’s no need,” Grace said softly. “You’ll make friends in no time, you’ll see.”

“Yes,” Rose said. “Loads…lots of friends. In no time at all.”

Her father cleared his throat. Both Grace and Rose looked at him; and Rose could see him seething underneath his own _mooi goodlo_. She smiled a little brighter at this.

“She’ll be fine, won’t she, Tommy?” Grace looked at him expectantly.

“So long as she behaves herself,” he said.

“Oh, of course she will,” Grace said as though this was the silliest thing she’d heard in her life. “Won’t you, Rosie?”

“Of course,” Rose echoed, not taking her eyes off her father’s.

The look on his face gave her enormous satisfaction. For the first time in living memory, Tommy was the first to look away.

“What’s on your list tomorrow, my love?” he asked Grace.

Grace had a great many lists of things she needed to sort out before the bastard became to heavy for her to do anything.

“They’re coming for the curtains,” Grace said. “D’you want any particular colours, Rosie? For your room.”

“You choose,” Rose said sweetly.

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes.” Rose turned her attention back to her plate. “Whatever you pick, I’m sure it’ll be _lovely_.”

#

She was up in her room, lying on top of her bed and staring at the soon to be changed heavy grey curtains, her face hurting a little from keeping a smile up for so long, when her father entered without so much as a knock.

“What’re you up to?” he asked.

“Nothin’.”

He crossed the room and stood over her.

“What was that at the table?”

“A roast.” Rose willed herself to keep looking at him.

Tommy smiled dangerously.

“What?” Rose asked, innocent as a day-old kitten.

“You’re not fooling me,” her father said.

“What d’you mean?”

He nodded slowly.

“Orright,” he said. “Suit yourself, little girl.”

Something got stuck in Rose’s throat, but she made herself hold it there instead of swallowing.

Tommy wandered off towards the door, he was almost out of the room when he stopped and looked back at her, a mask of a gentle smile over his face.

“Good night, darling,” he said. “Sweet dreams.”  


 

**Author's Note:**

> lubni - tart  
> ves'tacha - term of endearment (literally: beloved)  
> mooi goodlo - sweet face


End file.
